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Mania: Too Much of a Good Thing
Tennyson described Ulysses as sworn to seek, strive, find, not to yield. There are modern examples. I saw a biker on Route 84 between Hartford and Waterbury: he stood upright on his pegs, wore not a helmet but a pair of dark sunglasses, and stuck out his tongue as he rolled his head side to side. He rode toward the sunset at 80 mph. He appeared to be about 40 years old, will he reach 41? The biker, perhaps reacting to the same stimuli as a speeding fish or bird and with the same neural foundations, was another Ulysses. So, however, was a moth...
---------- the lesson of the moth i was talking to a moth the other evening he was trying to break into an electric light bulb and fry himself on the wires why do you fellows pull this stunt i asked him because it is the conventional thing for moths or why if that had been an uncovered candle instead of an electric light bulb you would now be a small unsightly cinder have you no sense plenty of it he answered but at times we get tired of using it we get bored with the routine and crave beauty and excitement fire is beautiful and we know that if we get too close it will kill us but what does that matter it is better to be happy for a moment and be burned up with beauty than to live a long time and be be bored all the while so we wad all our life up into one little roll and then we shoot the roll that is what life is for it is better to be a part of beauty for one instant and then cease to exist than to exist forever and never be a part of beauty our attitude toward life is come easy go easy we are like human beings used to be before they became too civilized to enjoy themselves and before i could argue him out of his philosophy he went and immolated himself on a patent cigar lighter i do not agree with him myself i would rather have half the happiness and twice the longevity but at the same time i wish there was something i wanted as badly as he wanted to fry himself Archy ---------- And if psychopathology is the genetic foundation for mate choice, we can imagine the biker and the moth falling in love. References: Marquis, D. (1973) archy and mehitabel New York: Anchor, pp 107-108. Maes, H. H., Neale, M. C., Kendler, K. S., Hewitt, J. K., Silberg, J. L. Foley, D. L., Meyer, J. M., Rutter, M., Simonoff, E., Pickles A., & Eaves, L. (1998) Assortative mating for major psychiatric diagnoses in two population-based samples. Psychological Medicine, 28(6), 1389-1401. Copyright, James Brody, 2005, all rights reserved. |
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